Michele Bachmann Needs a Civics Lesson

In a staggering public display of ignorance, Michele Bachmann -- a four term congresswoman -- showed the world that she truly is not qualified to sit in the House of Representatives. She fundamentally neither understands the roles of the three branches of government nor the Constitution of the United States of America.

In the video below, she essentially argued that the Supreme Court put itself above the electoral will by striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

I guess to Ms Bachmann it may appear to her that's that's what happened but that's certainly not how it actually worked.

When legislators (like Bachmann) create laws, they have to do so within the constraints of the Constitution. All democracies work this way. The role of the Supreme Court is simply to act like a referee in a hockey game and to blow the whistle to stop the play when a player is off side. In this case, DOMA was offside with the equal protection provisions of The Constitution. It doesn't matter if DOMA was voted in by Congress; it is a law that should never have been drafted in the first place.

Bachmann also simplistically -- and illogically -- linked the concept of "equal protection" to "majority rule" then, hop-skip-jump, concluded that those in the voting majority deserve equal protection more than minorities. (Ah, I can hear George Orwell now, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.")

The framers of the constitution, thankfully, had a different view of equal protection. In fact, exactly -- exactly -- the opposite. Equal protection means all people are equal in the eyes of The Constitution and one group isn't favored over another for protection.

So, to round it out, she invoked the God argument implying that the Court, by "ignoring the will of the people", was putting itself on a par with God. What she not so subtly suggesting that God smite the Supreme Court for being so presumptuous?

It was jaw-droppingly bizarre to watch.

She is right on one point: the framers of the Constitution would not recognize the government of today. Why? Not because the Supreme Court is working as designed but because they never counted on so many people being repeatedly elected to Congress who don't understand -- or choose to ignore -- the constitutional rules for writing laws.